You got very lucky that Hi-Tech Electronics has a replacement head unit for a "reasonable" price and I wished they had offered that to me back then when I sent mine into them for repair. They couldn't duplicate my issue since it was intermittent and offered to replace the entire CD drive tray, but it didn't completely fixed the problem. I had tried finding a replacement, but it was uber expensive even for used one on ebay. I'd found an equivalent one and works quite well, but it couldn't play MP3. I ultimately just returned that one and stuck with my original radio since I know I have a new CD tray in it vs an unknown one on the used.
My vent had the same issues when I had it apart last time. I didn't want to buy a new one since it would just end up with the same faith. After reading your experience with the brand new vent, I'm glad I had decided to give it a go at repairing it. The foam is super cheap on Amazon!
Here's a link to my thread asking for glue recommendation for gluing down the tabs/clips =>
https://www.zpost.com/forums/showthr...ht=center+vent
Here's the foam I bought from Amazon - fits perfectly =>
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00005202U...t_details&th=1